Word Counter
Count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs as you type, with reading time, keyword density and social media limits.
Your files never leave your device
Word limits are everywhere: university essays, job applications, scholarship forms, article briefs, product descriptions and social media posts. Going over a limit can mean a rejected form or a cut-off caption, and falling far short can look careless. A word counter tells you exactly where you stand while you are still writing.
Type or paste your text into the box below and the totals update as you go: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences and paragraphs. You also get an estimated reading and speaking time, which helps when you are preparing a speech or a video script, and a keyword density list that shows the words you repeat most often, so you can vary your wording.
Everything is counted in your browser. The text is not uploaded or saved, so copy it somewhere safe before you close the page. Different counters can disagree by a few words on hyphens, numbers and links; when a limit is strict, check with the tool the organisation itself uses.
Keywords appear here once you have written a few words.
Whether you are writing an essay with a 1,500-word limit, a meta description that must fit in Google’s results or a post for X, you need to know your length at a glance. This free Word Counter counts words and characters live as you type, and goes further: reading time, sentences, keyword density and ready-made limits for the platforms you write for.
Your files never leave your device. This Word Counter runs 100% in your browser. Your text never leaves your device: nothing is uploaded, saved or tracked inside the tool.
How to use the word counter
- Type or paste your text. Write in the box, paste from Word or Google Docs, or press Open .txt to load a text file.
- Read the live counts. Words and characters update with every keystroke, along with sentences, paragraphs, reading time and more.
- Check your limits. The bars show how your text fits an X post, SMS, SEO title, meta description, Instagram caption, YouTube title and LinkedIn post.
- Tune your keywords. Use Keyword density to spot overused words and two- or three-word phrases, then edit right in the box.
Everything it counts
Common word and character limits
| Where | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| X (Twitter) post | 280 characters | Standard accounts; links count as 23 characters on X itself. |
| SMS | 160 characters | Per message with the basic character set; Arabic and emoji drop this to 70. |
| SEO title tag | ~60 characters | Google cuts titles by pixel width, so treat this as a guide. |
| Meta description | ~155 characters | Longer snippets are usually truncated on mobile. |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 characters | Only the first lines show before “more”. |
| YouTube title | 100 characters | Keep the key words in the first 60 or so. |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 characters | About 200 characters show before “see more”. |
How long should my text be?
There is no single right length, but some guides help. A typical school essay paragraph is around 100 to 200 words. A news article is often 600 to 1,200 words. Many in-depth blog guides run from 1,500 to 2,500 words, but length only helps when every section answers a real question. For speeches, multiply the minutes you have by about 130 to 150 words: a five-minute talk is roughly 700 words.
At 238 words per minute, a 1,000-word article takes just over four minutes to read. That figure comes from a large 2019 meta-analysis by Marc Brysbaert, which found that the often-quoted 300 words per minute overestimates how fast adults really read non-fiction in English.
Using keyword density the right way
Search engines understand topics, synonyms and context, so repeating a keyword more often does not make a page rank better, and obvious stuffing can hurt. The keyword panel is best used as a mirror: if one word dominates the list, vary your wording; if a phrase you care about never appears, you may be missing the point your readers are looking for. Switch to 2 words or 3 words to find repeated phrases, which are often a sign of filler.
Tips for writers
- Edit in place. The box is a full editor: fix text here and watch the counts change.
- Clean pasted text. “Trim extra spaces” removes double spaces and stray blank lines from copied PDFs and emails.
- Need text from a file? Extract it with PDF to Text or, for photos and screenshots, Image to Text (OCR).
- Designing a layout? Fill it with placeholder copy from the Lorem Ipsum Generator.
Frequently asked questions
How are words counted?
The tool uses your browser’s built-in language-aware word segmentation (Intl.Segmenter), the same technology browsers use for double-click word selection. Hyphenated words and contractions such as “don’t” count as one word, numbers count as words and punctuation does not.
Does it count characters with and without spaces?
Yes. Characters counts everything you typed, including spaces and line breaks, and treats an emoji or an accented letter as one character, the way people see it. Characters (no spaces) leaves out spaces, tabs and line breaks.
How is reading time calculated?
Reading time uses 238 words per minute, the average silent reading speed for English non-fiction found in a 2019 review of 190 studies by Marc Brysbaert. Speaking time uses about 140 words per minute, a typical pace for presentations.
Is my text saved or uploaded?
No. Everything is counted locally in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server, and the text is gone when you close the page, so copy it somewhere safe first.
What is keyword density?
It is how often a word or phrase appears compared with the total number of words. It helps you catch repetition. There is no magic percentage for SEO: Google advises writing naturally for people, so use the list to avoid stuffing rather than to hit a target.
Does it work with Arabic and other languages?
Yes. Word segmentation follows the language of the text, so Arabic, French, Spanish and many more are counted correctly. Languages written without spaces, such as Chinese and Japanese, are split into dictionary words by the browser, so results may differ slightly from other counters.
Why do different word counters give different numbers?
They treat edge cases differently: hyphens, slashes, numbers, URLs and emoji. Microsoft Word, for example, counts “e-mail/web” as one word. Small differences of a few words in a long text are normal.
Is there a length limit?
No fixed limit. Long documents of tens of thousands of words work fine on modern devices; very large files may make typing feel slower on older phones.
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By Abdullah Al-Janoubi · WorldScope Tools · Updated October 2026
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